


October 1: "Can you feel this?"

by Qophia



Series: Qoph's Fictober 2018 [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst and Humor, Ficlet, Fictober, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-07-23 14:07:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16160456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qophia/pseuds/Qophia
Summary: The mark had stopped growing once the rift immediately under the Breach was sealed, but that didn’t mean it was comfortable. It nagged and niggled, a jagged fragment of something fundamentally wrong forced under her skin to nestle like a splinter.





	October 1: "Can you feel this?"

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CatC](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatC/gifts).



> hi i haven't written anything in a hojillion years; all feedback welcome
> 
> this is dedicated to CatC, who at the end of May very sweetly encouraged me to write more, and then very sweetly did not bug me about it all summer
> 
> Edit: Now with bonus [hilarious crack spinoff](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16163477) from the amazing [coldturkey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coldturkey/pseuds/coldturkey)!

Lyn Trevelyan set her teeth and fixed her eyes on the wall opposite the chair in which she sat, deliberately perpendicular to the arm she'd laid out on the table next to her so that the apostate mage might bend over it to poke and prod. The mark had stopped growing once the rift immediately under the Breach was sealed, but that didn’t mean it was comfortable. It nagged and niggled, a jagged fragment of something fundamentally wrong forced under her skin to nestle like a splinter. Small wonder magic was seen as such a curse.

Surely one’s personal magic must be different, though? The apostate certainly didn’t seem troubled by the exercise of his own. How much of the pain was simply a function of the magic being foreign to her? Most of it, probably. Which was, of course, begging the question of what the pain signified. Lyn certainly felt she’d experienced her share of it before, from the satisfying ache of training to one particularly bad hunting mishap that had left her parents scrambling for a healer from the Ostwick Circle. This definitely had more of the flavor of the latter than the former, a warning of damage rather than a confirmation that a part of herself was being conditioned toward its proper use. But with the Breach looming overhead there was no time to rest and heal, nor even any indication that time would do aught to remedy the injury.

“Can you feel this?”

Even if it could, there was no guarantee that it wouldn’t take the form of the mark working its way out of her hand, the way splinters sometimes do, and that struck her as a potentiality more terrifying than the prospect of learning to live with the pain. Nothing else seemed to affect the rifts: no form of magic, no alchemy nor artifice. Even templars had tried and failed to effect even the slightest of changes. And, really, that was the crux of it. The pain was terrifying not just because it was pain, but because of what it signified.

“Herald? Can you feel this?”

That the magic they were all depending on was utterly foreign to her. That it might eventually kill her, when she finally closed the Breach. That it might be killing her right now. That her body might  _recognize_  the mark was killing her, and somehow force it out, ultimately bringing about not only her own death but that of quite literally everyone else. Lyn couldn’t decide which was worse: the idea that she might die with the Breach still unsealed, or that she might escape being torn apart by the mark only to gain the privilege of dying with the rest of the world as the Veil tore itself to shreds. When she’d first awoken after the Conclave, she worried that sealing the Breach might kill her—but as she’d realized even worse possibilities, she became increasingly desperate for the opportunity to even attempt that sacrifice. Anyone who could possibly imagine that  _Andraste herself_  had  _deliberately_  handed this much responsibility to the Trevelyans' overeducated, oversexed, overspoiled youngest daughter was  _clearly_  playing with a few cards short of—

“Herald!”

Lyn started, the chair scraping the floor as it jumped with her sudden jolt. How long had the apostate been trying to get her attention? She winced and grinned apologetically as she turned to look at him. “My apologies, Serah Solas, I was lost in thought. How can I help?”

He sighed, and she got the distinct impression he was suppressing a roll of his eyes through sheer force of will. “Can. You. Feel this.”

“Feel what? Well, I suppose that makes it a no, since I don’t—oh.  _Oh_. I don’t feel  _anything_!” She made a motion as if to raise her arm from the table, then thought better of it, glancing at him for permission. When he nodded, she lifted the hand near her face, turning it to different angles to catch the light from the hearth, then digging her right thumb enthusiastically into the palm. The mark was still visibly there, and when she pushed at it, it still flared as it sought to find a nearby rift to connect with, but... that was it. No pain. No splinter. No jagged edges. “What did you  _do_?” she asked, half excited and half terrified.

Solas clasped his hands behind his back and permitted himself the very slight upturn of lip that Lyn was fairly certain was the equivalent of a full-on gloat in a less modest man. “It was the artifact you discovered in the Hinterlands that first prompted the idea. As you are not a mage and thus bear no natural connection to the Fade through the Veil, no immediate means of integrating the mark had previously presented itself. The device prompted me with the possibility that even an utterly inanimate object might establish a connection to the Veil. I spent several nights considering the mechanics of that connection from the Fade. The theory behind it seemed sound, so I had only to adapt the principle to a living host.”

Lynne smiled up at him past her hand, the green light dancing across her face as she flexed her fingers open and closed. “Whatever we’re paying you, it’s not enough.”

An eyebrow rose. “Actually, Herald, I am not certain you are paying me at all.”

“There, see? I said it. Go see Josephine, and tell her I said you deserve a raise. Actually,” she said, rising from the chair, “I’ll tell her. A raise, and a...” Lyn looked around the cabin for what else Solas might be missing. What could an itinerant mage even use?

“A stipend for research materials would not go amiss. I am finding that the tomes with the most promising descriptions also tend to fall rather outside the means of an elven apostate.”

“Done and done. All the books you can eat.” She paused in the doorway. “We... are feeding you, at least?”

“If one considers what they serve at the inn ‘food,’” he said, with the moue of disapproval that told Lyn that he’d encountered Flissa’s Tuesday Stew.

She laughed. “All right. Salary, books, and a reminder to the kitchen that you’re to get the same as the rest of us muckety-mucks.”

“Thank you... I think. I  _have_  seen what the commander considers lunch.” Was that a joke? Was Serah Serious Research actually poking fun at Cullen?

“Don’t mention it.  _Especially_  don’t mention whatever bizarre Ferelden fare Cullen prefers if you want either of us to ever eat again. And, really, this is me thanking you. I can’t tell you what a relief it is to know that the mark isn’t going to... Well. That it isn’t going anywhere, and neither am I.”

Solas’s face fell back to its typical sober mien. “I assure you, Herald,” he said, “it was absolutely the least I could do.”


End file.
